UPDATE - Feb. 25, 9:45 a.m. ET: Big data applications are a key priority for Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who has been pushing for Commerce Department agencies to explore ways of making more of their data available to businesses and the public. In a Feb. 24 speech in Silicon Valley, Pritzker said the Department's interest in making more weather and climate data publicly accessible also stems in part from the recognition that weather and climate-sensitive industries in the U.S. "account for roughly one-third of GDP."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gathers and distributes enough weather and climate data to support a multibillion-dollar private-sector weather industry. Now, it is seeking ways to release vast new troves of this data, a move that could be a boon for businesses and researchers.

NOAA on Monday issued a request for information aimed at soliciting ideas from the private sector to help the federal agency free up much of the 20 terabytes of information that it gathers daily on the land, sea and air. In doing so, NOAA would provide a data bonanza to researchers, and enable private companies to develop new weather and climate tools.

The federal big-data request indicates that NOAA is considering putting much of its data into the cloud, where it could be used by the private sector and the public for various purposes. For example, NOAA's weather data is already used for forecasting conditions up to more than a week in advance, and NOAA's ocean-survey data is crucial for marine navigation and offshore oil and gas-drilling operations.

"Quite simply, NOAA is the quintessential big-data agency," Joe Klimavicz, NOAA's chief information officer, said in a statement. "Imagine the economic potential if more of these data could be released. Unleashing the power of NOAA's data will take creative and unconventional thinking, and it's a challenge we can't tackle alone."

Although a relatively obscure agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA plays a large role in the daily lives of most Americans, considering it operates the National Weather Service, and is responsible for everything from issuing life-saving tornado warnings to regulating marine fisheries. NOAA operates radars, satellites, buoys, ships, aircraft, tide gauges and supercomputers, among other high-tech and data-intensive assets.

NOAA said it seeks to “unleash the potential” of its environmental data by working with entities outside of government. NOAA has 10s of petabytes of data stored in various ways, and produces more than 15 million products daily — from weather forecasts for New York City to tide-gauge observations in Seattle — which it said amounts to about 20 terabytes per day. This is twice the data of the entire printed collection of the U.S. Library of Congress, according to a press release.

Klimavicz's office issued the request from industry, nonprofits, research labs and universities “to determine whether capability and interest exists" for forming public-private partnerships to move NOAA's data into the cloud, and to put it to good use there.

"NOAA anticipates the partnerships will have the ability to rapidly scale and surge; thus removing government infrastructure as a bottleneck to the pace of American innovation and enabling new value-added services and unimaginable integration into our daily lives," the RFI said.

NOAA already operates a public-private partnership when it comes to weather information, since the agency is the main provider of raw weather and climate data to private-sector companies such as The Weather Channel, which uses NOAA data to make their own weather forecasts for the public.

However, NOAA has at times been reluctant to open more of its functions to private partnerships. Despite being billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule with its own next-generation polar-orbiting satellites, the agency has yet to make a move to encourage the growth of the private-sector weather-satellite industry. Several companies, such as PlanetIQ and GeoOptics, are looking to enter into agreements with NOAA under which the companies would gather weather information, and sell it to the government.

Some in Congress have called upon NOAA to look more closely at private-sector satellite opportunities, including in the form of draft House legislation, and Monday’s request for information may be a response to that.

However, the RFI specifically asks for industry interest in “no-cost agreements.”

“These partners would be responsible for funding all costs related to the movement of data to the cloud, as well as their own technology infrastructure,” the RFI said.

NOAA would continue to make data freely available to the public, even if moving more data to the cloud allows some companies to develop new value-added services that would be offered to the public for a fee.

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.